We are celebrating 15 years — and counting — of stories that are deeply researched and deeply felt, that build a historical record of what the city has been.
Urban Design Forum and The Architectural League of New York announce the 2025-2026 New City Critics Fellows.
We are excited to name Jessica Angima, Amanda Chen, Olivia Fu, Saritha Ramakrishna, and Lucas Vaqueiro as the newest cohort of New City Critics, a fellowship program empowering new, fearless, and diverse voices to challenge how we design and develop our cities.
Our fellows this year — writers, architects, organizers, journalists, artists, a self-professed bureaucracy nerd among them — will be training a critical gaze on New York City over the next nine months. The fellowship supports critics from underrepresented backgrounds through guest lectures and workshops, research guidance, networking and public events, and the production of new critical projects. Through work published on a dedicated vertical on Urban Omnibus, the fellowship encourages a more expansive conversation on the future of cities.
This year’s cohort was selected by committee members Garnette Cadogan, Sukjong Hong, Sam Maldonado, Anjulie Rao, and Sabina Sethi Unni. The program will be led by Ming Lin, Program Coordinator at Urban Design Forum, and Mariana Mogilevich, Editor in Chief of Urban Omnibus.
Jessica Angima is a Kenyan-American organizer and social practice artist. In a constant state of process, she facilitates intimate community through the exploration of art, ecology, and contemplative practice. Her work focuses on self-formation; using writing, photography, and dharma to explore the effects of specific places, environments, and objects on personal and collective awakening. With 400+ hours of meditation instruction training, she leads community-engaged art and meditation workshops throughout New York City. She is a 2025 Bandung Resident and holds an MA in Arts Politics from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
For the fellowship Jessica will continue to probe “the process of becoming ‘of’ a place, indigeneity and urban practice, the relationships between land and psychic geography, climate policy and green space, repetition, and walking as a method of placemaking.”
Jessica is currently reading: Atlas of Urban Mythologies by Francesca Cocchiara and Sergios Strigklogiannis, Walking Art Practice: Reflections on Socially Engaged Paths by Ernesto Pujol, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki
Amanda Chen is a writer and artist from California living in New York. Her work broadly explores how individual and collective memory formation is shaped by representations and engagements with digital and embodied public space. Her essays, criticism, and fiction appear in BOMB, the Brooklyn Rail, Catapult, Dirt, the Drift, Harvard Review, MUBI Notebook, the New Republic, and elsewhere in print and online. Previously, she was a fellow at Dia Art Foundation and a member of the Critics Academy at the 62nd New York Film Festival.
In her work, Amanda has said she “is interested in desire and public space, individually and together,” and of cities, “I’m fascinated by how the hyperdensity of cities opens up new ways of existing in relation to others but also frequently engenders loneliness and other antisocial feelings or behaviors.”
Amanda is currently reading: Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle by Silvia Federici, Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen, and Six Films by Marguerite Duras
Olivia Fu is a writer, organizer, and aspiring urban planner from San Clemente, California. Now based in Brooklyn, she supports New York’s grassroots organizing ecosystem as North Star Fund’s Youth Organizing Associate. She also works as a seasonal figure skating instructor in Prospect Park, where she spends a lot of time thinking about power, parks, and public spaces. She’s most interested in telling stories about cities that connect the rhythms of everyday urban life to their vast and complex histories—and that her friends would find interesting enough to send in the group chat. She received a BA with Honors in Urban Studies and a minor in Creative Writing from Stanford University.
For the fellowship, Olivia will continue being guided by her interests including “how things in everyday life and pop culture reveal some collective spirit of democracy and autonomy (like the Ratatouille musical on TikTok). Or the opposite, things that seem innocuous on the surface but have an infected root of authoritarianism and/or white Supremacy (like the “Coastal Cowboy” aesthetic that has taken over my hometown).”
Olivia is currently reading: Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York City Commune 2052-2072 by M.E. O’Brien and Eman Abdelhadi, Reconsidering Reparations by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities are Plundering our Cities by Davarian L. Baldwin
Saritha Ramakrishna is a writer, researcher, and urban planner based in Brooklyn, NY, originally from Phoenix, Arizona. Criticism, reporting and fiction of hers has appeared in The New Republic, The Baffler, Orion Magazine, Literary Hub, Urban Omnibus, and The New Orleans Review. As a writer, she considers our 21st-century economy, the obligations between people and their institutions, and the interplay of landscape and ideology.
Saritha is interested in addressing the absurdities of the American economy as manifested in NYC. “Lately I’ve been interested in the absurdities of the American economy as manifested in NYC. I think a lot about American identity and what constitutes a ‘good life,’ how these aspirations assert themselves in space, and the resulting emotional resonances or feelings of alienation. For example, I’ve been haunted by Facetune ads on the train, and huge billboards hawking beef tallow skincare.”
Saritha is currently reading: America by Jean Baudrillard, The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Essays on Desire and Consumption by Katy Kelleher
Lucas Vaqueiro is a Brazilian civic designer, educator, and researcher based in Queens. Informed by his experience working with cities across the Americas, from New York to São Paulo and Montreal to Montevideo, Lucas is interested in exploring how government bureaucracy can afford wonder. His practice includes installations, publications, and community engagement that reframe bureaucracy as a civic infrastructure worth reimagining—and celebrating. His work has been featured at Milan Design Week and the Creative Bureaucracy Festival.
Fascinated by the inner workings of the state, Lucas hopes to continue his work exploring bureaucracy and has said “To me, bureaucracy can be more than dysfunctional or a coercive tool; it is also wondrous, absurd, and whimsical.”
Lucas is currently reading: New York Sketches by E.B. White, Language City by Ross Perlin, The Anthropologists by Ayşegül Savaş
The 2025–2026 New City Critics program is made possible through the lead support of the Mellon Foundation, with additional support from Critical Minded, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Nat Oppenheimer, Karen Stein, and Calvin Tsao.
We are also grateful to the founding donors of the program: Stella Betts, Joan Copjec, Vincent Chang, Critical Minded, Rosalie Genevro, Mario Gooden, Paul Goldberger, Graham Foundation, Tami Hausman, Mary Margaret Jones, Astrid Lipka & Lyn Rice, Thom Mayne, Zach Mortice & Maria Speiser, Eric Owen Moss, Nat Oppenheimer, Charles H. Revson Foundation, Moshe Safdie, Karen Stein, Calvin Tsao, Mark Willis & Carol Willis, and Siqi Zhu.
Urban Design Forum programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
To learn more about supporting New City Critics, please contact Cameron King at king@archleague.org or donate here and select New City Critics.
The views expressed here are those of the authors only and do not reflect the position of The Architectural League of New York.
Dispatches from the New City Critics fellows: new, fearless, and diverse voices to challenge the ways we understand, design, and build our cities.
